What is the difference between mindfulness and meditation?

Meditation is a general term for all training techniques that actively regulate attention and adjust mental models, and mindfulness is a state of awareness that “focuses on the present moment consciously and non-judgmentally.” It is also one of the most popular branches of the meditation system. To put it bluntly, you can understand meditation as the entire category of sports and fitness, and mindfulness is just the most popular running event among them.

I couldn’t tell the difference in the first six months when I first came into contact with mental training. The first eight classes of the introductory meditation camp I signed up for were all about mindful breathing and body scanning. I even defaulted to mindfulness as another name for meditation. It wasn’t until I came into contact with other systems of practice that I discovered that this was not the case at all. For example, if you follow the guide and do visual meditation, imagine yourself standing on the top of a mountain, blowing the wind, and let the accumulated emotions flow out along the wind. During the entire process, you are completely immersed in the imaginary scene, and you do not need to deliberately maintain awareness of the current state. At this time, what you are doing is meditation practice, but it has nothing to do with mindfulness. On the other hand, there are also many practitioners who do not do structured meditation at all, but just integrate mindfulness into their daily lives. When eating, they concentrate on feeling the softness, hardness, sourness and sweetness of the food. When walking, they feel the strength of the soles of the feet landing. Even if they are distracted in a meeting, they can immediately detect and bring their attention back to the current discussion. For them, mindfulness is a state of life and does not require the use of meditation as a tool to achieve it.

Of course, not everyone agrees with this boundary. Many Western scholars who prefer empirical research believe that all meditation that can lead people into a state of non-judgmental awareness can be classified into the category of mindfulness. They even believe that mindfulness is the core of modern meditation.； However, many practitioners who are deeply involved in the traditional practice system do not agree with this statement. For example, practitioners of Theravada Buddhism will believe that mindfulness is only one of the practice links in the Eightfold Path, and it is not a concept at the same level as the various meditation techniques developed in later generations. There is no need to forcefully bind the two.

In fact, for ordinary enthusiasts, there is really no need to worry too much about the difference between concepts. If you just want to relieve anxiety and reduce the problem of being distracted, whether it is setting aside 10 minutes for mindfulness meditation, or paying more attention to the present when walking and eating, it is a good method that can help you. There is no need to fight for definitions, right?